Thread: What Soft Drinks are Doing to Your Body

What Soft Drinks are Doing to Your Body on Yahoo! Health

Soda, pop, cola, soft drink — whatever you call it, it is one of the worst beverages that you could be drinking for your health. As the debate for whether to put a tax on the sale of soft drinks continues, you should know how they affect your body so that you can make an informed choice on your own.

Soft drinks are hard on your health
Soft drinks contain little to no vitamins or other essential nutrients. However, it is what they do contain that is the problem: caffeine, carbonation, simple sugars — or worse, sugar substitutes — and often food additives such as artificial coloring, flavoring, and preservatives.

A lot of research has found that consumption of soft drinks in high quantity, especially by children, is responsible for many health problems that include tooth decay, nutritional depletion, obesity, type-2 diabetes, and heart disease.

Why the sugar in soft drinks isn’t so sweet
Most soft drinks contain a high amount of simple sugars. The USDA recommendation of sugar consumption for a 2,000-calorie diet is a daily allotment of 10 teaspoons of added sugars. Many soft drinks contain more than this amount!

Just why is too much sugar so unhealthy? Well, to start, let's talk about what happens to you as sugar enters your body. When you drink sodas that are packed with simple sugars, the pancreas is called upon to produce and release insulin, a hormone that empties the sugar in your blood stream into all the tissues and cells for usage. The result of overindulging in simple sugar is raised insulin levels. Raised blood insulin levels beyond the norm can lead to depression of the immune system, which in turn weakens your ability to fight disease.

Something else to consider is that most of the excess sugar ends up being stored as fat in your body, which results in weight gain and elevates risk for heart disease and cancer. One study found that when subjects were given refined sugar, their white blood cell count decreased significantly for several hours afterwards. Another study discovered that rats fed a high-sugar diet had a substantially elevated rate of breast cancer when compared to rats on a regular diet.

The health effects of diet soda
You may come to the conclusion that diet or sugar-free soda is a better choice. However, one study discovered that drinking one or more soft drinks a day — and it didn’t matter whether it was diet or regular — led to a 30% greater chance of weight gain around the belly.

Diet soda is filled with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose, or saccharin. These artificial sweeteners pose a threat to your health. Saccharin, for instance, has been found to be carcinogenic, and studies have found that it produced bladder cancer in rats.

Aspartame, commonly known as nutrasweet, is a chemical that stimulates the brain to think the food is sweet. It breaks down into acpartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol at a temperature of 86 degrees. (Remember, your stomach is somewhere around 98 degrees.) An article put out by the University of Texas found that aspartame has been linked to obesity. The process of stimulating the brain causes more cravings for sweets and leads to carbohydrate loading.

Carbonation depletes calcium
Beverages with bubbles contain phosphoric acid, which can severely deplete the blood calcium levels; calcium is a key component of the bone matrix. With less concentration of calcium over a long time, it can lower deposition rates so that bone mass and density suffer. This means that drinking sodas and carbonated water increases your risk of osteoporosis.

Add in the caffeine usually present in soft drinks, and you are in for even more trouble. Caffeine can deplete the body’s calcium, in addition to stimulating your central nervous system and contributing to stress, a racing mind, and insomnia.

Skip the soda and go for:

• Fresh water
Water is a vital beverage for good health. Each and every cell needs water to perform its essential functions. Since studies show that tap water is filled with contaminants, antibiotics, and a number of other unhealthy substances, consider investing in a quality carbon-based filter for your tap water. To find out more about a high-performance filtration system, click here.

On the go? Try using a stainless steel thermos or glass bottle, filled with filtered water. Enhance the flavor of your water with a refreshing infusion of basil, mint leaves, and a drop of honey.

• Fruit Juice
If you are a juice drinker, try watering down your juice to cut back on the sugar content. Buy a jar of organic 100% juice, especially cranberry, acai, pomegranate, and then dilute three parts filtered water to one part juice. You will get a subtle sweet taste and the benefit of antioxidants. After a couple of weeks, you will no longer miss the sweetness of sugary concentrated juices.

• Tea
Tea gently lifts your energy and has numerous health benefits. Black, green, white, and oolong teas all contain antioxidant polyphenols. In fact, tea ranks as high or higher than many fruits and vegetables on the ORAC scale, the score that measures antioxidant potential of plant-based foods.

Herbal tea does not have the same antioxidant properties, though it is still a great beverage choice with other health benefits, such as inducing calming and relaxing effects.

If tea doesn’t satisfy your sweet tooth, try adding cinnamon or a little honey, which has important health benefits that refined sugar lacks. For a selection of healthy teas that promote total body wellness, click here. Drink up!

I hope you find the ways and means to avoid soft drinks. I invite you to visit often and share your own personal health and longevity tips with me.

Originally Posted by larvidchr

Living out here in TH. where it is so hot I get really thirsty, and pure water is just boring to drink

How about plain soda water or even soda water with a bit of lemon in it?

I'm a drug dealer- I just sell the stuff, hardly ever consume it.

Originally Posted by chitown

Originally Posted by larvidchr

Living out here in TH. where it is so hot I get really thirsty, and pure water is just boring to drink

How about plain soda water or even soda water with a bit of lemon in it?

Well I like the taste of it mixed with the red-wine, and 2-3 glasses of red-wine have proved to have health benefits, antioxidants and thinning of the blood, helps prevent heart disease and blood clots ect.
Alcohol in limited amounts have been known to be beneficial for many years and still today doctors recommend 2 snaps or two glasses of red-wine every day, for adults that is.

I gave up many years ago. Now if I drink soft drinks I feel a bit crap afterwards. Still indulge if there's gin or rum though. They just don't taste that good mixed with water.

thanks for ruining my day big fella...i like pepsi max as a mixer,,and soda water just makes me fart [more]

Originally Posted by sabang

I'm a drug dealer- I just sell the stuff, hardly ever consume it.

How did the burgers go at the boat races?

I buy the home brand mineral water and add some juice to it.

Originally Posted by nedwalk

soda water just makes me fart [more]

Awesome, I love having a good toot!

All the more reason to drink it.

Good thread. I'm trying to switch totally to bottled water and an occasional Oishi Manao.

My alcohol of choice is JW Black Label and as I hate to drink it neat I mix it with coke, Just a splash and to cut the hard edge.

Other than that I have started drinking bottled Chinese tea which is probably just as bad for you if the truth be known but water is my favourite beverage.

Apart from my weekly piss up I never touch soft drinks and thankfully my kids prefer water with their meals and very rarely will drink lolly water.

Soft drinks are bad stuff. I never drink sodas. I have enough vices with the beer and lack of exercise at the moment.

I don't drink sodas mainly as I don't like them. Never understood why people like Coke or Pepsi.

Originally Posted by Loy Toy

My alcohol of choice is JW Black Label and as I hate to drink it neat I mix it with coke, Just a splash and to cut the hard edge.

Other than that I have started drinking bottled Chinese tea which is probably just as bad for you if the truth be known but water is my favourite beverage.

Apart from my weekly piss up I never touch soft drinks and thankfully my kids prefer water with their meals and very rarely will drink lolly water.

Drink Jamesons neat with water on the side.
Much much better whiskey and cheaper too.
JWB is crap whiskey.

Shouldn't be mixing your whiskey with coke unless you're in your 20s or a woman. And LT's certainly not in his 20s.

I've started drinking water with my whiskey now or with soda water if I'm out.

Originally Posted by larvidchr

and cold tea/ice tea no thanks,

I never used to enjoy iced tea until about 2 months ago. Now its my drink of choice. Bloody love the stuff.

Nam manao or green tea.

Dislike soft drinks, don't drink booze.

Originally Posted by MeMock

How did the burgers go at the boat races?

OK, but not great. I think she sold forty or fifty burgers over the weekend.

The Hot Dogs didn't sell too well at all on the first day- but on the second day she just grilled the sausages on a stick, and sold them strait without the bun. They went like hotcakes, maybe because they are tasty Dogs- from 'Be Lucky', a German/Thai outfit. So now I'm left with a coupla dozen hot dog buns in the freezer, to be consumed over time.

Interestingly though, Mrs makes a very nice 'yam wun sen'. She knocked up a bowl of that, and they were queing up for it- it's not a dish thats made much around here. So she ended up making bowl after bowl, and selling heaps- I had to head home and ferry more ingredients. Some of the Hot Dogs and Burger mince went into that too, so that and beer & lao khao sales actually made it a pretty good earner by local standards- more than paid for my beer consumption anyways.

All in all, both an interesting experience and a learning experience. Sure kept the Mrs busy.



Really, the consumption of soft drinks and crappy snack foods out of a packet here in Thailand just appalls me- especially by the kids. And yeh, we sell this shit out of our little shop, because it sells.

When it's hot, I'll sometimes have a soda water with lime juice squeezed in it.

I Take My Fruit Juice 50:50